Execution vs. Strategy

As a leader, you can influence two principal things when it comes to producing results: your strategy (or plan) and your ability to execute that strategy.

Ask yourself this question:

Which of these do leaders struggle with more? Is it creating a strategy, or executing the strategy? Would your answer be strategy or execution?

Every time at Franklin Covey, we pose this question to leaders anywhere in the world, their answer is immediate: Execution!

Now, ask yourself a second question: If you have an MBA or have taken business classes, what did you study more execution or strategy?

When we ask leaders this question, the response, once again, is immediate: Strategy! It’s perhaps not surprising that the area with which leaders struggle most is also the one in which they have the least education.

After working with thousands of leaders and teams in every kind of industry, and in schools and government agencies worldwide, this is what we have learned: once you’ve decided what to do, your biggest challenge is in getting people to execute it at the level of excellence you need.

Why is execution so difficult? After all, if the strategy is clear, and you as the leader are driving it, won’t the team naturally engage to achieve it? The answer is no, and it’s likely that your own experience has proven this more than once.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution book includes the most actionable and impactful insights from all that we’ve learned for more than a decade. In it, you will discover a set of disciplines that have been embraced by thousands of leaders and hundreds of thousands of front-line workers, enabling them to produce extraordinary results.

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Gain a deeper understanding of the disciplines required to achieve your most important goals in the midst of daily urgencies. Register to attend a complimentary 4 Disciplines of Execution webcast.

About the Author

Chris McChesney is a Wall Street Journal #1 National Bestselling Author – The 4 Disciplines of Execution. In his current role of Global Practice Leader of Execution for FranklinCovey, Chris is one of the primary developers of the 4 Disciplines of Execution. For more than a decade, he has led FranklinCovey’s design and development of these principles, as well as the consulting organization that has become the fastest growing area of the company.